Reading (1990)
Context: Do not suppose, however, that I intend to urge a diet of classics on anybody. I have seen such diets at work. I have known people who have actually read all, or almost all, the guaranteed Hundred Best Books. God save us from reading nothing but the best.
“If nothing saves us from death, at least love should save us from life”
“God save us always," I said, "from the innocent and the good.”
Pt. I, ch. 1, pg 15
Source: The Quiet American (1955)
The Saviors of God (1923)
Context: We do not struggle for ourselves, nor for our race, not even for humanity.
We do not struggle for Earth, nor for ideas. All these are the precious yet provisional stairs of our ascending God, and they crumble away as soon as he steps upon them in his ascent.
In the smallest lightning flash of our lives, we feel all of God treading upon us, and suddenly we understand: if we all desire it intensely, if we organize all the visible and invisible powers of earth and fling them upward, if we all battle together like fellow combatants eternally vigilant — then the Universe might possibly be saved.
It is not God who will save us — it is we who will save God, by battling, by creating, and by transmuting matter into spirit.
Quotes of the week, BBC News, 6 December 2005, 2007-04-18 http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/funny_old_game/4498894.stm,
Lt. Cmdr. Charles E. Madison.
The Americanization of Emily (1964)
Context: You've done the morally right thing. God save us all from people who do the morally right thing. It's always the rest of us who get broken in half.
